Its optics are great, and it has unusually great handling. It is a very sturdy lens; almost the entire body is the zoom ring, and zooming and focus are a breeze. Close focus is only 1.5 feet (0.45 meters), so if you can see it, you can shoot it!

This 18-135mm lens was the only lens I needed to shoot everything for the two weeks during which I borrowed it. I never needed any other lens for anything, and this 18-135mm is easy to pack, handle and shoot. You never need to take it off your camera. As experienced photographers know, if you can't catch it with 135mm on small format (equivalent to just over 200mm on full-frame), a longer lens won't save you: you need to get closer! In other words, don't worry about this lens "only" going to 135mm instead of 200mm. If 135mm isn't long enough, nothing will be.

The Canon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS has excellent image stabilization, as expected. I can shoot at 1/15 at any focal length and get great shots, while with IS OFF, I'd need to shoot at 1/60 to get the same results.

On an 18 MP Canon 7D, I get tripod-equivalent sharpness almost all of the time hand-held at 1/4 of a second — one quarter — at 18mm, 1/12th of a second at 1/50 and 1/15 at 135mm. Whoo hoo!

Here are tests, shot standing with no support, but holding quite still, as one might shoot in a rifle match.

"Real Stops Improvement" are how many extra stops I got, IS ON compared to IS OFF.

"Marketing Stops Improvement" isn't comparing the speed I can use from IS OFF to IS ON, but instead comparing the speed one can use with IS ON to the old-wives-tale speed of 1/focal length. That's called Lying with Statistics.

If the subject is moving, a faster lens is better because the extra stops of real speed let you use faster shutter speeds to stop action; Image Stabilization does nothing to stop subject motion; it serves merely to counteract camera motion.

Nicer than expected, the Canon 18-135mm IS is built with pretty decent amateur construction. The exterior is all plastic (except for the mount), but it's high-quality, tough plastic that seems like it ought to take a pretty decent beating. This lens seems like it ought to last a while.

The biggest barrier to sharpness with this lens is getting perfect focus. Once in proper focus, this is a swell lens.

As seen on the 18MP Canon 7D, it's always sharp in the center, and a little less sharp on the sides wide-open. Stopped down a stop or two, it's really sharp everywhere.

This is a very good lens; it never gets soft anywhere, as many lenses used to do. If something's not sharp with this lens, you either didn't get perfect focus (which Canons sometimes just miss), or you're doing something wrong.

Shot on lower-resolution cameras, I doubt you'd ever be able to see any lens limitations.

I was expecting primitive 6-pointed sunstars from its 6-bladed diaphragm, but to my surprise, sunstars usually have 12 points!

It turns out that the diaphragm blades are shaped in such a way that this is what you see at most apertures, except at f/16 and smaller, where you're back to 6 points.

When used in Professional (P) exposure mode as I do, it is unlikely that you'll use apertures as small as f/16; if you see sunstars, they will probably be 12-pointed, which is reminiscent of the LEICA SUMMICRON 50mm f/1.4. Nice!

I saved the best for last: one of the biggest reasons I love this lens is for how well the zoom control works.

The zoom ring is the entire barrel, from the zoom markings all the way past the Canon logo and silver ring, all the way up to the focus ring itself.

At first I though this lens was defective, because I held an unmounted lens by the section with the silver Canon logo, and turned. It felt like it was locked, whereas in fact I was simply holding two different parts of the same zoom ring, not a fixed part of the barrel!

To mount and unmount, you must hold it by the very back, but with this broad a zoom range, I never needed to change lenses.

There is sometimes some zoom creep, but so what: it zooms so fast and easy that it's trivial to zoom where you want it.

The feel of the zoom grip is the best there is. The ribbing and material grab my fingers so well, and the zoom is so smooth and even, that I can zoom it with one finger. I can shoot all day, and my fingers don't hurt, as they do with the 24-105mm IS L.

I really like the design and material of the zoom grips. The grip well, and call me a stickler, but they seem much more sturdily attached than the rubber of many other lenses. I never really trust that the rubber of my Nikon lenses is going to stay put, but this Canon EF-S lens feels as if the rubber is a permanent part of the ring, not simply glued on.

Focus after zooming, because focus drifts as zoomed.

The zoom feel is great. You can zoom all the way in and out with a short twist, and it's always easy to turn and easy to set precise focal lengths. It's a little tighter between 18mm and 24mm, and it is geared more towards speed over precision, but all in all, the only lens which zooms more pleasantly is Nikon's 70-210mm f/4 AF from 1986.

I wasn't expecting this, but honestly, if I shot small-format Canon, this would be my favorite all-around zoom. I love it because of its moderately tough build, light weight, great ergonomics, very good optics, and perfect zoom range and close focus. The price is a steal, too.

I prefer this 18-135mm to Canon's 18-200mm IS. I never really liked the 18-200mm because it never felt right, while this 18-135mm feels great. The 18-200mm also weighs and costs more, and has more distortion.

I wouldn't worry about 200mm versus 135mm. If 135mm isn't long enough, nothing will be. If you think you need a longer lens, you're wrong: you need to get closer to get a better picture, not a longer lens.

I would never use Canon's full-frame 28-135mm IS on a 1.6x camera instead of this much newer lens. THe old 28-135mm came out back in the 1990s for film cameras, and it starts at a silly focal length for 1.6x cameras. I have no idea, other than lost cost to Canon, of why Canon pushes the 28-135 IS for use with small-format cameras.

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